CONCEPT. The major choice I made for my paintings occurred when I arrived at the concept behind the paintings. Everything else flows from the concept. My paintings are an expression of the difficulty of making good decisions in a complex world. The complexities of living often make it difficult, even with the best of intentions, to make good decisions that have a satisfying outcome in particular about important matters. This happens not just at the individual, personal level but also at the community and larger levels. It is most disturbing when occurring at the geopolitical level as it affects innumerable numbers of people.
I did not purposefully set out to do paintings about the complexity of living. It was while trying my hand at painting realistic, naturalistic landscapes that I became dissatisfied with my work, examined what I was doing and looked for ways to simplify the paintings as prelude to painting more satisfactory pictures. This led me to paintings composed of structures resembling houses, churches and other buildings. Originally, using photographs as a source, the structures began as many highly simplified pencil drawings that documented the extensive variability of design and architecture evident in the structures. My intent was to try to understand why the places I had photographed intrigued me and to use these investigations as preliminary studies for naturalistic paintings. Instead, rather than painting scenes of the places depicted in the photographs, I began to use the simplified images almost literally to build my own imaginary landscapes. Over time, the simple structures evolved into more complex shapes, reiterating the basic complexity concept. When they took on the appearance of three-dimensional shapes, this process is like sculpting complex geometric architectural forms. It is an experience of exploration, discovery and creation. It is also testimony to the fact that the paintings are original creations, not arrived at by copying other artists or pursuing a particular school of thought or art movement.
My earlier paintings do resemble traditional landscapes and included the triumvirate of land, water and sky, although very stylized. This progressed to the land becoming totally covered with the structures. Then the water disappeared. In the most recent paintings the structures are no longer anchored to land, which is completely gone, but appear either to float on an ocean or in the sky. The important thing to realize about these paintings is that the space wherein the imagery resides is a psychic space, not the representation of any real space.
COMPOSITION. I begin a painting with an idea about some aspect of the complexity concept. For example, I may think of life as a journey of decisions and arrange the structures in a trail or path. Or, as is the case with my “flying” series, the recognition that people often, even persons in positions of power and influence, make important decisions “on the fly.” Or, the idea may reflect something psychologically deeper, such as feelings of conflict or information overload when trying to make difficult decisions and then I might paint a mass of structures.
The compositions are intellectually challenging. The paintings are often not unlike creating a puzzle of geometric designs and then deciphering how to paint them. The complexity of the painting process echoes the complexity concept. Several paintings I have done actually started by first drawing a composition of structures and then drawing another composition over top of the first as though it did not exist and then adding even a third composition. The challenge therein was to decipher how light might be affected as it reflects off of not one structure’s surface but interacting, multiple structures’ surfaces. The multiplicity harkens back to the idea that complexity is multidimensional and intricate.
Once I make a decision about the overall composition, subsidiary decisions follow. One has to do with the background. In paintings that have gold leaf skies the idea was that no matter how difficult or disastrous life is on our small planet, there is ultimately a benevolent salvation. Those paintings are influenced by medieval religious iconography. When I take a more pessimistic outlook on the future, the backgrounds are very dark. Recently, paintings strike a more pleasant, resigned mood and are dominated with a bright blue background color. The blue might be mistaken for signaling all is well, when actually it is more akin to being resigned to an uncontrollable fate and making the best of it.
LIGHT. In the paintings I conceive of there being a light source in order to model three-dimensional structures. This was less of a challenge in the earliest paintings where the structures were flat, two-dimensional. But as my paintings progressed seemingly little decisions along the way eventually led to the structures’ three-dimensionality. The decision on the direction of the light is influenced by how the structures are laid out on the support and whether I want most surfaces of the structures to either face the light, the usual layout, or away from the light. The decision is also influenced by the mood of the painting.
COLOR. Reasons for color choices vary. They have been dictated by mood choices, creation of atmospheric perspective, and a basic desire to explore color or to limit color. Many of the paintings exhibit a wide range of color in order to show depth, undulating movement across a land surface, or simply for the enjoyment and the learning that comes from exploring color. Recently, I decided to limit the color spectrum. It is again another intellectual challenge. My current palette is now indeed very limited and similar to Rembrandt’s and consists of Old Holland brand vleesoker (flesh ochre) and gele oker licht (yellow ochre light), Grumbacher Payne’s gray and titanium white,, and Liquitex phthalocyanine blue (no longer manufactured by Liquitex).
VALUES. Value decisions come into play in modeling the structures and in creating atmospheric perspective. This became more important as my imagery became three-dimensional and as I wanted to simulate depth. Structures in the distance have values in the middle range, there is less contrast between surfaces, and color shifts towards blue. Structures nearer the picture plane have stronger contrasts and color more in the yellow, orange and red range.
PERSPECTIVE. I choose not to abide by the strict rules of classical perspective. The world of my paintings is in the psyche where such rules do not apply. Besides that, classical perspective assumes that the world, nay the universe, is precisely ordered and that there is an overarching control. Whether or not that is true, day-to-day life does not appear to fit that sense of order. The perspective that does exist in my paintings is local, that is, sections or parts of the imagery simulate perspective, but there are no overall points of view dictating the direction of every line, all ordered, all in control.
SIZE. There is no conceptual limit to the size of my paintings. Size limitations are dictated mostly by practical concerns. I have painted a four by six foot painting and a five by six foot painting. The challenges with such sized paintings are obvious. Carting them around is difficult. Finding a space to hang or store them is difficult. Some of my images go across several canvases that would present additional challenges if done in a large size. And then there is the financial cost of creating large paintings. Also, with large fields of a single color which is custom mixed one needs to mix in one sitting all of the paint that will be required, necessitating concerns related to time and storing paint until the next painting session. The concept, however, is not limited by any size concerns. I would go large simply to create more of a visual impact, where a viewer’s field of vision can be nearly totally occupied by the image.
MATERIALS. Most of my paintings use one medium, oil on a support. In some paintings I have used 23 K gold leaf. But my paintings are not about the medium and materials. I am not exploring substances external to myself. I am not with a scientific eye investigating the properties of paint and applying them like a technologist. I am using paint and painting to express personal, internal feelings and ideas. For me paint is indeed, in the dictionary definition of the word, a medium: “something intermediate; an intervening thing through which a force acts or an effect is produced.”
SURFACE. Glossy or matt? My preference is for the natural surface created by dried paint. But I recognize the problems created by different paints drying differently creating an unequal surface appearance. To address this and for protection purposes, I do cover the paintings with Winsor & Newton’s “Conserv-Art Matt Varnish.” I also like to apply paint somewhat thickly, although less so with large paintings as the weight of the paint, which also increases with time due to oxidation, pulls on the canvas.